Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Russia Warns of ‘Painful’ Response If Trump Backs U.S. Sanctions

Russia is threatening to retaliate against new sanctions passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, saying they make it all but impossible to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of improved relations, reports Bloomberg.

The measures push U.S.-Russia ties into uncharted territory and “don’t leave room for the normalization of relations” in the foreseeable future, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said this morning, according to the Interfax news service.

Hope “is dying” for improved relations because the scale of “the anti-Russian consensus in Congress makes dialogue impossible and for a long time,” Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the international affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said on Facebook. Russia should prepare a response to the sanctions that’s “painful for the Americans,” he said.

The bill, passed by a vote of 419-3 on Tuesday, would strengthen sanctions. The measure, which now goes to the Senate, would let Congress block any effort by Trump to unilaterally weaken sanctions imposed under the Obama administration for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and its support for separatists in Ukraine.

Indications are that it will pass the Senate and that Trump will sign the legislation.